Hiring runs on documents that no one verifies.
Resumes claim job titles. Cover letters claim outcomes. References, when they exist at all, are usually a friend with a free hour. Companies do this dance every time they hire — and almost no one questions whether the inputs are real.
That's the actual problem. Not the funnel. Not the ATS. Not the interview format. The input layer.
What we kept seeing
Three things kept happening in conversations with hiring teams over the last year:
- Senior roles being filled by people who hadn't actually held the title before. Not bad people — just people who'd been generous with the boundaries of "lead" or "head of." Detectable in week six. Painful to undo.
- Strong candidates getting filtered out because their resume formatting didn't survive an ATS parser, or because they'd been at a "stealth startup" the screener had no way to verify.
- Hiring teams burning entire afternoons chasing references who never replied, or worse, replied with the kind of she was great that tells you nothing.
The thread underneath all three: there is no source of truth for what someone has actually done. So everyone improvises one. Badly.
What Dealt is
Dealt is a hiring platform that works on verified inputs. Employment history pulled from payroll and HMRC records, not LinkedIn self-reporting. Skills evidenced from actual work — repos, deployed projects, certifications validated at the source. References from confirmed colleagues, with structure so the answer means something.
For companies, that means the people who reach your shortlist have already cleared the basic checks you used to do yourself. You spend interview time on culture and judgement, not did this person actually work where they said they worked.
For candidates, it means the things you've actually built and delivered are what get you in the room. No more "we just couldn't tell from your CV."
What Dealt is not
This part matters as much as the rest:
Dealt is not a discovery platform. We do not put candidates on lists. We do not let companies cold-message you. You apply when you decide to apply.
The verification follows the candidate, but the candidate runs the process. We're tired of platforms that treat people as inventory.
What's coming
This blog will be a record of the decisions we make and what we learn from getting them wrong. Some of it will be opinionated. Most of it will be honest about what's working and what isn't.
Posts that are already on the way:
- Why "discovery platform" framing damages trust on both sides of the table.
- The stealth-startup problem and what HMRC data quietly fixes.
- Why your hiring funnel isn't broken — your top of funnel is.
- What references should actually look like in 2026.
If any of that resonates — whether you're hiring, looking, or just curious about the bones of it — we'd love to hear what you're seeing. hello@dealt.careers.
— The Dealt team